by Glen Ebisch
“Where are you staying in town?” Charles asked
“We’re at the Opalsville Inn.”
“Did you know that Lavinia Cole is staying there?”
Reggie frowned. “I didn’t. I hope we don’t run into her.”
“Yes, a confrontation might be dangerous to Marie.”
Reggie smiled. “Not with her training in the martial arts. I don’t think Lavinia would have a chance.”
They had come to a halt in front of the English Building, which Tori was describing to her mother and uncle. Charles said his good-byes, but not without reminding Tori that he’d be seeing her later on in class. It never hurt to reinforce that message. As he walked up the stairs to his office to prepare for his afternoon lecture, he found that he had a great deal to think about.
Chapter 14
Charles started a fire in the fieldstone fireplace in his study and settled down with a book. It had turned into a chilly evening for the end of September or at least it felt that way to him, which got him wondering whether he felt the cold more now that he was older. A picture flashed through his mind of himself in a wheelchair with a lap blanket and shivering on a hot August day. Fortunately this image disappeared from his mind when the phone rang.
“Hi, Dad,” Amy said.
Charles could immediately tell from the tone of her voice that something was wrong.
“What’s the matter, Honey?”
“The boys were talking on the phone to their father tonight, and the oldest one mentioned that they had been in a lawyer’s office. When I got back on the phone, Jack wanted to know why I was seeing a lawyer. I think he was worried that I was going to divorce him. I couldn’t have him thinking that, so I told him it was about granddad’s will.”
“And he put two and two together.”
“He asked me directly if granddad had left us something. I couldn’t very well lie, and I wouldn’t have been very convincing. He asked me directly how much I’d been left, and I had to tell him.”
“So now he knows,” Charles said, hoping that didn’t sound as grim as he felt.
“As soon as I told him, he said he was coming home, so he could take over investing it for the boys.”
“Did you tell him that you have been appointed trustee?”
“I did. And he said that since we were married, we were a team, and had joint responsibility for the boys.”
“I’m sure he considers himself to be the senior member of the team.”
There was a long pause. “Of course, he is a financial consultant and has expertise that I don’t, and he’d never knowingly do anything to hurt the boys.”
Charles knew this was a time when he had to exercise some diplomacy. “I think you should certainly discuss these matters with him, but ultimately the responsibility and hence the decisions have to be yours.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Amy said slowly.
“As far as his coming home is concerned, that’s a separate matter. That depends on whether he’s willing to agree that you can work.”
“He said I wouldn’t have to work because my job would be handling the boys’ investments.”
“A job which he’s going to take charge of,” Charles pointed out. “I suspect that means you’ll be right back where you were, running the boys to school and sports, while Jack handles their money and goes to work. Is that what you want?”
He could hear his voice getting louder and stopped talking to take a deep breath.
“I have to think more about this,” Amy finally said. “I almost agreed to have him come back home tonight. The boys seemed so happy after talking with him. But then I had a niggling feeling that this might not be the right thing to do.”
Thank God for niggling feelings, Charles thought.
“So I told him he couldn’t come home until I’d had more time to think about it. He wasn’t happy about that. When I was speaking with him it seemed like a good idea, but now that we’ve discussed it … well, it needs more thought.”
“I think you’re right,” Charles said, struggling to sound neutral. The last thing Amy needed was another man trying to browbeat her into doing what he wanted.
“Thanks for the advice, Dad,” Amy said.
“Any time, I’m always here for you.”
After he hung up, Charles sat and stared into the fire. Perhaps if he’d been more involved in running the family when he was younger, Amy wouldn’t have sought out such a petty tyrant for a husband. Charles sighed. Did it all come back to him? Probably all parents screwed up their children somehow. He just hoped he hadn’t done a worse job than most.
Chapter 15
The next morning Charles was sitting in his office, supposedly preparing for class. Actually, he found himself spending more time staring out his window at the blaze of fall cover that blanketed the hills to the north. His mind kept drifting back to Amy and her marital problems. Although he had never liked Jack the Philistine, he knew that divorce would have a devastating effect on his grandsons and probably on Amy. But he also wondered what kind of men the boys would turn into with a father who worshipped at the altar of money as his own father had done. Charles didn’t think he himself had turned out so bad, but what if his grandsons followed the path of his older brother Ed, spending their lives accumulating money and playing golf? For Charles that was the definition of a wasted life.
Charles heard a noise from the direction of the door and saw Yuri standing there.
“May I come in?” Yuri asked.
“Of course,” Charles replied, pointing to the chair on the other side of his desk.
Yuri took a seat but wiggled around as if unable to get comfortable.
“What’s wrong?” Charles asked.
“That scary woman came to see me,” he declared.
Since Charles thought Yuri was vaguely frightened by most women, he decided to narrow it down.
“Which woman is that?”
“That one who dresses all in black like some kind of witch.”
“Lavinia Cole?”
Yuri shivered at the mention of her name and nodded.
“What did she want to see you for?”
“First she wanted to know if Sebastian Locke had said anything about seeing someone right before his lecture, and I told her I couldn’t recall that he’d mentioned it to me. She gave me a very ugly look when I told her that I couldn’t be more specific.”
“What did she ask next?”
“She wanted to know if I saw anyone go downstairs in the library while Sebastian Locke was there.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. I said no.” Yuri got a guilty expression on his face as if there was more to tell.
“Did she ask you anything more?”
Yuri twisted and turned for a moment in the chair. “I didn’t want to get a student in trouble, but Jason Savoy did ask me where Sebastian was about forty minutes before he was due to present.”
“Where were you at the time?”
“In the auditorium making sure that everything was set up as it should be.”
“Did you tell him?”
Yuri nodded. “I didn’t see any harm in his knowing.”
“Did Jason go looking for Sebastion?”
Yuri shrugged. “I have no idea. I stayed in the auditorium supervising.”
“Did you tell Lavinia Cole that Jason knew where Locke was?”
“Yes.” From the expression on Charles’ face, Yuri must have known that what he did was wrong because he quickly said, “She frightened me, Charles. I felt that I had to tell her because she knew already. It was as if she could read my mind.”
Charles stared hard at Yuri, wondering how a man who had survived such difficult times and oppression in the Soviet Union could be so intimidated by one woman. But as Charles knew from personal experience, each person had a different trigger, and what terrified one person could be a matter of indifference to another.
“It’s okay, Yuri,” Charles said. “I’m su
re nothing will come of it.”
As soon as Yuri left, Charles called Joanna and told her what he had learned.
“I’ll call Savoy in for further questioning tomorrow. You can’t sit in on the interview, but would you like to watch from the next room?”
“I’ll do that.”
“I’ll also give Cole a call and warn her not to approach Savoy. I don’t want her intimidating witnessess.”
“Good luck with that. I think she’s determined to conduct her own investigation, and I don’t think she’s afraid to use a rubber hose to get answers.”
“If she does, I’ll send her packing back to Vermont.”
Charles taught his class that afternoon. As he was sitting at the head of the seminar table, he looked at Jason Savoy, feeling guilty at putting him in the sights of the police. He wondered if this shy, weedy lad could possibly have overpowered and gotten a gun away from Sebastian Locke. It certainly seemed doubtful. He saw Jason and Tori talking happily together, and thought how easily adults complicate the lives of the young. That brought his thoughts back to Amy, and the part he had played in her conflict with Jack. He felt a rush of guilt and hoped the two of them could be reconciled. But that was followed by an equally strong desire that such a reconciliation should never happen.
Chapter 16
Joanna met Charles in the driveway of his home as he was coming back from his morning run. From the expression on her face, he knew that something serious had taken place, so without speaking he led her into the kitchen and poured coffee into what he by now thought of as her mug.
“Jason Savoy was attacked by Lavinia Cole outside of his dorm room last night. Fortunately, the student on dorm security was a football player, and he rushed out and broke it up. Even so Savoy got a split lip and a number of contusions. The campus police were called and wanted to press charges against Cole for assault, but Savoy begged them not to.”
“Why?”
“You know how boys that age are. He was probably embarrassed that he got beaten up by a woman.”
“So are you going to send her back to Vermont like you threatened?”
Joanna stared into her coffee cup and frowned. “I don’t think so. I don’t want her disappearing into the woods of Vermont with some survivalist group. What if it turns out that she killed Locke? As long as she’s in town poking around, at least she’s within arm’s reach.”
“Do you really think she’s putting on this investigation as a grand piece of theater to conceal her own guilt?”
“I don’t know. But I think she’s capable of just about anything. The drawback to letting her stay in town is who knows whom she’ll attack next. She’s staying in the same hotel with Sebastian’s ex-wife. Maybe she’ll come to blows with her, and they’ll be carrying Marie Locke out on a stretcher.”
“I doubt that. Marie is a martial arts expert.”
Joanna gave him a shrewd glance. “How do you know that?”
Charles realized with a sinking feeling that he had failed to tell her about his meeting with Tori, Marie, and Reggie. In an apologetic voice, he told her what he had learned yesterday.
Joanna shook her head sadly. “Charles, you have a lot to work on when it comes to keeping lines of communication open. Fortunately, I knew most of what you’ve told me from interviewing these people. But I didn’t know about Marie and the martial arts. I did know that Sebastian planned to go from here to Boston to meet with Reggie. I think I’ll have both of them come in again and question them in more detail on where they were at the time of Locke’s death.”
“Weren’t they in the Boston area?”
“That’s what they said, but you know it’s only about three hours from Boston to here. So I’ll need more detail on where they were specifically during that one hour time period when Locke was killed. And like I told you yesterday, I’ve got Jason Savoy coming in again. Now that I know he asked Yuri where Sebastian Locke was before the talk, I can put more pressure on him. When I called Jason yesterday to set this up, I told him he had a right to have his parents there or a lawyer. He said that he wanted you. Can you come by this morning for the interview?”
“I didn’t think we were that close, but sure.”
“I’ll also let you watch from another room while I interview Marie Locke and Reggie Locke. Maybe you’ll spot something I missed. Officer Henley will be there with you, since he’s assisting me on the case.”
Charles groaned. “The same Officer Henley who thinks I’m the killer.”
“Oh, I think by now he’s downgraded you to just being an accomplice.”
“Good to know. Now I can breathe a lot easier.”
• • • •
Later that morning, when Charles went out to his car to drive down to the police station, he noticed the bat on the front seat, his inheritance from his father. What was he going to do with it? He supposed he could afford it a place of honor by mounting it over the fireplace; but then everyone who visited him would want to know about it, and he’d be required to make up some affectionate story about his father. That would be both tiresome and mendacious. Alternatively, he could put it in a dusty corner next to his bed where it would be handy for warding off night time intruders. No one would ever see it there, and he could avoid discussing the object with anyone. That seemed preferable, but he felt a twinge of guilt at treating the one thing left him—which his father obviously valued—so dismissively.
For the time being, he avoided the issue by tossing the bat on the back seat, and heading down the road toward Opalsville. When he got into town, he took a left and headed toward the center of town where the police station was located. Although the interior had been extensively renovated as part of a bond bill passed ten years ago, the police were still located in the same nineteenth century brick building. Joanna had told him that going down in the basement to check on records that had not been computerized was a scary propositon. There were some rumors about giant rats, although she suspected that was just a police legend.
He parked behind the police station in a slot reserved for visitors. When he went in the front door, an officer in uniform stared at him stolidly from behind thick, probably bulletproof, glass when he announced that he was there to see Lieutenant Thorndike. After the officer made a call, he told Charles to take a seat, and she’d be right out. It took about ten minutes before she came out through a door and motioned to him to follow her.
“Sorry you had to wait,” Joanna said as they walked down an institutional green hall. “Jason was a few minutes late, and I wanted to get him settled into the room before getting you. When you see him, you may be a bit shocked.”
“Why’s that?”
“Lavinina really worked him over before the dorm security guy pulled her off.”
Joanna opened a door to the right and Charles went into a room that was blindingly white with a large mirror along the right wall. Jason was sitting on the other side of the table. Even though he had been warned, Charles was shocked at how the boy looked. He had three nasty looking scratch marks on his right cheek, a colorful bruise on his forehead, and a black and swollen upper lip.
Jason started to grin then stopped with a grimace of pain. “Hi, Professor Bentley. Thanks for coming. Guess I don’t look too good.”
“I guess not,” Charles said, trying to smile encouragingly. He sat down opposite Jason and next to Joanna. He wasn’t sure of the etiquette for seating in an interview room.
“Are you sure you don’t want to prefer charges again Ms. Cole?” Joanna said. “It isn’t too late. The officer at the scene took an official statement.”
Jason shook his head. “I understand why she attacked me. She thought I had killed Mr. Locke. But I didn’t. I just want this whole thing to be over.”
“It can be if you’ll just answer a few questions for us,” Joanna said.
“Okay.”
“Professor Yuri Abramovitch has told us that you approached him before the lecture and asked where Mr. Locke was. Is that true?�
�
The boy shifted uneasily in the chair. “Yes.”
“Did you go to see Mr. Locke?”
The boy nodded.
“Why?” Joanna prompted after several moments of silence.
“I wanted to ask him why he didn’t want me going out with his daughter.”
“How did you know he didn’t want you to?” Joanna asked.
“Tori told me.”
Perhaps a time when it would have been better for young lovers not to be so honest with each other, Charles reflected.
“What did Mr. Locke say when you saw him?”
Jason hesitated. “He said he wanted his daughter to be with a strong independent man, and not some weak-kneed boy who’d never had an original thought in his life and never would.”
“I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t weak, but he wouldn’t listen and pretty much threw me out.”
Joanna frowned. “Bodily?”
“No, he just waved me away, and said that he was too busy to discuss it.”
“What did you do?” Charles asked.
“I left.” Jason gave miserable smile. “I guess that just proved he was right about me. I should have slugged him in the jaw, then he would have had some respect for me.”
“There are other ways of proving you’re strong,” Charles said, and Jason gave him a grateful glance.
“Was there anyone else out in the hall when you left?” Joanna asked.
“Not that I saw. But I was so upset, I’m not sure that I would have noticed.”
Joanna glanced at Charles who gave a small shake of his head.
“That will be all for now, Jason, but stay in town in case we have to talk some more,” the lieutenant said.
Jason stood up. “Thanks for coming in to be with me,” he said to Charles.
“Not a problem. See you in class,” Charles said with a smile.
Chapter 17
“Follow me,” Joanna said to Charles once the boy had left the room. She took him next door into a darkened room and placed him in front of a glass window that looked into the room they had just left.
